Reality is an Egg Stealing Scottish Terrier

It was George and Albert's ever cheerful demeanour that has energised me this morning, as it was their unwavering ability to be sweet natured despite any brickbats the weather can throw at us, that has lifted my mood from a rain soaked apathy to a wry smiling positivity.
For the sixth week in a row, the week has started out wet, cold and miserable. "Bosoms" is now dreadfully overgrown with weeks and filled with puddles and  even the most robust of the field animals are looking somewhat shopworn and bedraggled. The weather has a strange ability to zap the strength and knock the teeth out of positive resolve and good energy.
Yet animals like Albert and George seem to maintain their jaunty good wills whatever the season
It is just not in their nature to be anything else but cheerful
This morning was a case in point.
As I was rebuilding part of the compost pile which had collapsed under the weight of heavy over night rain showers ( a bloody smelly and disgusting job) I watched as George carefully ambled towards the duck house.
He was doing so, with that slightly forced way people walk when they want to appear casual and invisible , so I knew immediately that he was up to something.
Very slowly George  approached the duck house. He stopped to sniff here and stopped to pee , there, but it was clear to me that his major objective was the indian runner duck eggs that had been laid that morning in the corner of the coop furthest from the lane.
George knows, that he  always been told him that he has to keep away from sitting eggs, but greed had over taken  from obedience and he was desperate for an early breakfast.
I stopped and watched him as he ambled up to the house door then pretended to be busy when he snatched a quick look over to me, to see if I had noticed him.
Slowly ( and I am sure he was actually holding his breath at this point!) he pushed past the assertive hens that were sat in the doorway, sheltering from the rain, then seconds later reappeared with a large blue egg in his mouth.
You could almost see him smiling gently to himself at the very thought of eating it, and he craftily turned his head away to the left, so that if  I had indeed spared him a glance, I wouldn't have noticed the egg perched firming between his teeth
Now, knowing that he risked a real bollocking if caught with the egg in his gob, he then bolted for a patch of long grass behind which he could eat his prize in peace and was immediately joined there by Albert who had also noted his extracurricular activities with some interest.
Cat and Dog shared their eggy spoils amid some loud yet good natured banter and I had to smile that when both finally emerged from the grass, they were licking their lips and banging heads playfully together like little schoolboys in the playground


This simple little everyday event has been enough to lift my attention away from dystopian thoughts, bad news days and the bleak depressing weather of our  typically sad summer days and the thought crossed my mind .
If I could bottle the enjoyment of watching this little drama...I would be a  very rich man

A Belly Full of duck egg!

When I'm 64

It's not a mop cap..it's a kat kidston shower cap!

The family came around last night for a belated celebration for my sister's birthday. You couldn't really tell that now she is in her mid sixties, she has far too much chutzpah for that and could never, ever be mistaken for one of those grey hairs, who watches Countdown with her slippers on, her pen and pencil at the ready.
Ann is our family's matriarch. She possesses an iron fist in a velvet glove kind of personality that would have "won the war" if indeed, she was living in 1945. and she is the constant backbone for a family which is now happily heading towards it's fourth generation

Happy Birthday Chuck
and we did enjoy your rendition of this little "ditty" last night!


"When I get Older, losing my hair,
many years from now.
Will you still be sending me a valentine,
birthday greetings,
bottle of wine?
If I'd been out til'' quarter to three,
would you lock the door.
Will you still need me
will you still feed me,
when I'm 64!"


xx

Snail Wars

There is a war going on.
The wettest June on record
(and nearly a month's worth of rain falling in just one day yesterday) coupled with the presence of stone walled garden has meant that those dirty little bastard garden snails have seen their populations treble and quadruple in this season of gloomy weather and damp evenings!
Chomping away on the few blooms that have survived the deluge, these greedy little buggers have been laying the cottage under siege and every night you can see them leaving their grotty slime trails over the windows in their effort to break in in order to devour us all in our sleep.
Last night, I lost it with them.
My patience was running a little thin anyway, what with the fact that I had been soaked at least 8 times during a day that had seen a river of run off flowing down the lane , but when I caught a "herd" of the little sods stuffing their fat faces on my young laburnum tree , I threw caution to the wind and collected armfuls of them from the wet bark which I then started to hurl across the lane against the stones of the church wall with some gusto.
After a minute or so, I got rather good at grabbing a snail then lobbing it against the wall without actually looking at what I was doing, and within minutes scores of the little "bodies" were flying through the air with gay abandon to land bruised, battered and broken in the lane


Apologies to the lady driving the blue fiat panda
The small dints in your paintwork, I am sure will come out quite easily

Telephone Etiquette

Our Phone: which actually  still works!

Hearing the phone ring at "odd" hours is always potentially fraught with anxiety and stress.
To me, a "chit-chat" phone call only happens between the perimeters of say 9.00am to 9.30pm....outside  those times phone calls are usually a sign that something is amiss.
This morning the phone rang three times  well before 8am.
To put it delicately, I was busy "in the loo!" so had to be content with checking the answer phone to find out just why someone would be ringing me at such an antisocial time.
Luckily there was no real "disaster" to deal with, just a somewhat garbled phone message from an elderly villager who needed a hand to sort out a computer problem, but the phone call got me to thinking about acceptable and unacceptable telephone etiquette in this, our age where everyone and his mother owns a mobile phone.
I have received my fair share of "out of hours" phone calls which heralded the death of a loved one and there is nothing quite as blood chilling as that "ringggggg- ringgggg....ringggggg-ringggggg" that jars you out of a peaceful sleep and makes you gallop downstairs with a heavy heart and a lump in your throat.


I have had to make numerous of these kind of phone calls in my time. Mostly at work to be sure, but to be honest I have had to make quite a few that have been much more personal, and none of them have ever been easy calls to make.
Nurses never have any training in this sort of thing...you just pick it up as you go along. But there are several rules with this sort of thing that haves to be adhered to.
The first is that by hook and by crook, you should avoid making the phone call in the first place. Relatives and next of kin should be aware, if at all possible that their loved one is deteriorating and that they should come to the hospital immediately. In many of these kind of cases the patient often dies before the relatives arrive, but at least the nurse can break the bad news face to face, where physical as well as psychological support can be given personally and hopefully with some sensitivity.
If you have to break bad news over the phone, the rule is that it has to be done carefully, briefly and most importantly CLEARLY, as relatives will only hear a couple of words that you actually say to them.
All they will hear is "Hospital.....I am very sorry..... and "has died" very little else will register, especially in the lonely darkness of 2am in the morning.
Perhaps my work experience has coloured just how I feel about "inappropriately timed" phone calls. 
So, if it is not an emergency please do not call me "out of hours"
... it's not rocket science!

Up in the night with a sexy nurse

I feel hungover this morning

Not that any alcohol was drunk last night....it wasn't

It is just the fact that I was woken up at 1.30am, again at 2.30am and didn't fall asleep until well after 4am

I feel jetlagged  and somewhat jaded.

and the reason for this, I hear you ask?

yes, it was my one and only black indian runner duck

Over the past month or so, several of the runners have gone missing on an evening. All have eventually returned after dark, only to be found quacking in hysterical circles outside their locked duckhouse in the wee small hours.

I suspect that the young and inexperienced females may have been sitting on eggs, only to be driven off them when the dark frightened them home.

The same thing, I suspected, happened to the black runner last night. as at dusk Halleh, the lone drake could be seen  standing nervously at the far border of the field looking out at the fields beyond as if he was searching for her.

But as the heavens opened and hens all trouped back to their damp hen houses, the black runner sadly never appeared.

I went out with a torch at 11pm, and again at 12 midnight, and still the duck failed to turn up, so I went to bed with the bedroom window open, just so I could listen out for any homecoming quacking in the middle of the night.

At 1.30 I was woken up and I was sure I heard the duck ( now I think I may have been dreaming)

so out I went in the torrential rain to search for her, but there was nothing to be heard or seen

I was up again soon after, and then was wide awake listening to the rain thundering on the cottage roof until 2.30 when I finally made a cup of tea and sat down to watch the French film "À Bout Portant"

Gilles Lellouche..... unlike most nurses I have ever met!

I would recommend A Bout Portant ( English title Point Blank) to anyone who is wide awake in the middle of a miserable night for it is a silly but entertaining thriller about a Parisian nurse Giles Lellouche ( who, by the way, has a pair of brooding Gallic eyes to die for) and his drastic attempts to save his wife from a gang of criminal kidnappers.

The film has lot's of  exhilarating chases, gunfights, and silly plot twists and turns to enjoy  and it's all a bit daft, but like I said, when you are up worrying about a lost duck during a storm, the film proved to be an ideal panacea to all the ills in the world.

Hey Ho

I had THE phone call the other day.

A tearful, slightly upset plea from a concerned bulldog owner

Could I rehome another lovable middle aged bulldog bitch who possessed her own set of problems that needed ironing out by someone with patience, some time and and a love of the breed.

I discussed it with Chris and have thought about it for an age, and today I rang the breeder back with my answer.

My answer was a reluctant  "no."

This evening I found myself telling fellow chicken keeper, Margaret the news as she walked her terriers past the field and she nodded in that understanding way only a dog owner could do

"I am glad you've said no", she said after a pause "Your heart is far too bruised"

and do you know what?....... she's right.

House Names

Dirty Clouds over the Gop Yesterday

The United States is stealing our weather...they are overly hot and dry...we are overly wet and damp. It's just not fair!

I have not been able to get my hands dirty on bosoms as yet this week and the weeds are high as an elephant's eye!.....oh for a bit of sun and clear skies.

The cottage smells of damp dog at the moment as yet again we got soaked on our morning walk..it's been a f*cking crap summer so far.

George, steaming gently

I walked the dogs in nearby Prestatyn this morning. I had gone down to drop a belated birthday card off for my sister, so she could get it when she arrives back off holiday later today. I left her some flowers on the door step too as a little morale booster, for right in the middle of her break in Spain, her on suite toilet spring a leak and soaked her newly decorated living room with devastating force.

A neighbour saw me leaving the flowers and looked so worried that I felt I needed to explain that no one had, in fact died !....
"Her bog has flooded the house" I called out in way of an explaination
They left looking just as worried!

My sister lives in an affluent leafy suburb....Built in the 1920s, the  houses are all surrounded by wide tree lined avenues and have the look of middle England at it's most peaceful. It's a nice place to walk, and it's a nice place to "house watch"...and to be honest, when it's pissing down with rain, it's a slightly cleaner place to walk the dogs!

Upper Prestatyn

 I have always found the names that people choose for their houses interesting. For an estate like the one I walked around this morning, there is no obvious need for the naming of the houses, for all the homes have clear numbers unlike most of the older houses here in Trelawnyd who have to have their own names to differentiate them from each other "postally". But name them, people do, and I must admit that I found the list of house names oddly fascinating.

Of course the old stalwarts of "The Willows", "Fairfields", "Kenwoods" and "Chatsworths" figured highly alongside of the more traditional Welsh names of  "Bryn Newydd" (New Hill) and "Bryn Teg" ( fine Hill) , but now and again a more "individual" name came into the mix

"Nellandy" might have been owned once by Nellie and Andrew...."Sea Whispers" must have a owner with a bit of a dramatic flair and I'll be buggered if I know just why "Gunther Place" was called "Gunther Place"

The motivation for naming such extensions of self, perhaps can tell a great deal about a person.

"The old Rectory"- which is just around the privet hedge from my Sister ( and which has never in it's life ever had a vicar near it) of course has delusions of grandeur

(see Telegraph cli[pping) while "The Haven" and "Sunnyside" provide a bit of optimism in this uncertain world... and I always liked the name of a house I once saw in Netheredge in Sheffield, as it was called "Witts End".......

My favourite house name comes from a novel and more famously from the filmed version of that novel.... the film is Mrs Miniver and the house name in  question is "STARLINGS"....that middle class haven of Englishness where Walter Pidgeon and Greer Garson won their own little parts of the war!

Starlings as English as bagels

Our Cottage is  Called Bwthyn-y-llan by the way..... which literally means Church Cottage......a little nicer than it's historic general name of Tan-y-fynwent (below the cemetery!)

What is your house name? I would be interested to know!
Funny what you think about when it's pissing down with rain!

Yellow Room!

 

For Those that may be interested in what Chris' new room looks like

Here is a sneak peek!

  

 

Is it all a bit much?

Ok he's a quick look

(The stately Home wallpaper has been left intact on the other wall!)

He's seen the photo and liked it!